This year the class of 2024 is helping the City of New Meadows by designing the layout and helping to install the playground equipment in Dorsey Warr Memorial Park. We are continuing to build the ripple. Our classmates have worked to improve the park through a Pay it Forward project, the WWII Anne Frank memorial, and through the profits made from the Mountaineer Tiny Home.

We are very excited to partner with the city. We took a walking field trip to the park to sketch designs and inspect the current equipment. We are adding a Jumping Jack Play System, an adaptive swing seat, and more swings. In addition to add new equipment in the park, the students would like to host a grand re-opening of the playground for the community. We are tentatively planning to assemble the playground equipment September 23-28 with a grand-reopening in the first week of October.

We also met with the city officials this week to learn more about the park and how we can partner together to bring an updated playground to our community. We enjoyed meeting Angie Mettie, Jessie Gerke, Mac Qualls, and Doug Buys. They answered many of our questions and gave us a lot to think about. The current area of the playground is 79’x66.’ We are drawing a base maps with our layout ideas for the placement of the playground equipment. We are very excited to share our ideas.

Throughout the project, the students will be speaking at city council, parks and recreation, and at school board meetings. Please come join us to hear more about building the ripple in our community.

During this phase we are also partnering and are supported through the Rural Schools Collaborative. We thank them for supporting place-based education. You can learn more here: Rural Schools Collaborative

Please contact Devon Barker-Hicks at dbarker@mvsd11.org if you would like to volunteer to help us put up the playground equipment and or help host the grand-reopening.

Class of 2024
Mrs. Devon Barker-Hicks